Development and research of the efficiency of a tractor transmission with a disc type gearbox

BACKGROUND: Modern tractors are equipped with gearboxes that are divided into three ranges, such as slow, operating and transport, for the sake of better power usage and fuel efficiency of the engine as well as getting higher performance. In addition, gearboxes must have a large number of gears, that leads to an increase in their mass and dimensions. An increasing mass of gearbox leads to additional high-quality metal consumption as well as energy costs for self-propelling of a tractor, which reduces its operational capabilities.

AIMS: Increasing the number of gears and reducing the weight of gearboxes for agricultural tractors.

METHODS: A disc-type gearbox (Patent RF No. 208805) has been developed to make it possible to increase the number of gears and reduce the weight of gearboxes for agricultural tractors. The feature of this gearbox is the gear disk with three gear rims on top and three on the bottom that is installed in its housing in addition to the usual gears and shafts. The implementation of the gear disk with gear rims makes it possible to reduce the number of gearwheels by more than half. The experimental gearbox is manual and interrupted-drive. It gives 18 forward gears and 18 reverse gears. Laboratory studies of a tractor with the experimental gearbox were carried out on a roller test bench. Load condition was arranged with the STEU-40 electric brake test rig in order to determine the transmission efficiency. During the testing, the torques on the gearbox input shaft and the tractor half shafts were measured. Reliability testing of the experimental gearbox, built in the LTZ-55 tractor, lasted for 2714 hours under the normal operation condition.

RESULTS: The results of the transmission efficiency study at the 1st, 5th and 10th gears with different drive wheels torques as well as different oil temperatures revealed that the transmission efficiency is in the range of 0.75-0.96 at the transmission oil temperature of 16 to 60°C, which corresponds to the numerical values of fixed-ratio transmissions of stock tractors. Operational tests of the tractor, equipped with the experimental gearbox, showed efficiency of gearbox during operation of 2714 hours.

CONCLUSIONS: Laboratory studies of the LTZ-55 tractor, equipped with the experimental gearbox (Patent No. 208805), showed that the transmission efficiency improves with an increase in the drive wheels torque and the transmission oil temperature, and deteriorates with an increase in the gear number. The efficiency of the experimental transmission is in the range from 0.75 to 0.96, which corresponds to stock manual interrupted-drive transmissions of tractors. With an increase in oil temperature up to 60 ° C, the efficiency of the transmission greatens.